Ashita, Mama ga Inai

Ashita, Mama ga Inai (明日、ママがいない, literally Tomorrow, Mother will not be here) is a 2014 television drama that first aired on Nippon Television (NTV) on January 15, 2014. It follows the stories of ten children living in an orphanage.[1] The drama stars child actresses Mana Ashida and Rio Suzuki, who are noted for their roles in the television dramas Mother and Woman respectively.[2]

The series aired for nine episodes and garnered an average viewership rating of 12.85% in the Kanto region.[3] The series was embroiled in a controversy due to its depiction of orphanages, which was criticized by Japanese welfare organisations.[1]

Contents

Maki was left in an orphanage, named Kogamo no Ie (コガモの家) lit. Duck's House after her mother was arrested for involuntarily causing hurt. Here, she meets "Post", a girl who was abandoned at birth at a baby hatch[clarification needed] and other children who have been abandoned by their parents or are taken into under state care due to a history of child abuse. Kogamo no Ie is run by Tomonori Sasaki, an eccentric housekeeper who runs the orphanage with an iron fist.

The children at the home faces discrimination from the wider society as well as the psychological trauma of being abandoned at the home. While many of the children harbour the hope of eventually being adopted into a loving family, Maki clings onto the hope that her mother would return one day to claim her from the orphanage.

Ashita, Mama ga Inai garnered a viewership rating of 14% in the Kanto region for its first episode.[4] However, due to the controversy it was embroiled in, the viewership rating for its second episode fell to 13.5%.[5] Overall, the series garnered an average viewership rating of 12.85% in the Kanto region.[3]

The cast's performance was well received by viewers, with 50.8％ of the viewers expressing high satisfaction with the performance of the main cast in the series's first episode in a survey carried out by Oricon.[6]

After the first episode of the drama aired on January 15, 2014, there were widespread complaints from foster care associations, orphanages and Japan's only hospital that accepts abandoned children via a baby hatch, Jikei Hospital (慈恵病院).[7] Jikei Hospital criticized the depiction of such abandoned children, and in particular, against the naming of an abandoned child character "Post" because this constitutes "mental abuse" against children who were actually left at a baby hatch.[7] The controversy escalated on January 21, when Japan's national association for orphanages and other related organisations requested that NTV cancel the series.[1] The series was also mentioned during a session of the Japanese legislature,[8] when then-Welfare Minister Norihisa Tamura mentioned that "There were reports about a girl living in a children's home having hurt herself (after watching the drama)".[1]

The controversy was resolved when Nippon Television offered to "give greater consideration to children" by making unspecified changes to the drama's script in a statement made to the nursing home council on February 4, 2014. The next day, the president of the national council for children's homes, Koichi Fujino, acknowledged the broadcaster's statement, and hinted that he will watch the series until its last episode.[1]